


Something Only We Can Understand

by Enk



Category: Marvel
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Friendship, Gen, Lost Love, Other, canon compliant symptoms of PTSD, mention of canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2015-09-27
Packaged: 2018-04-22 15:18:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4840391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enk/pseuds/Enk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ultron has been defeated. Tony is back in New York trying to work through grief he doesn't immediately realize he's feeling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Only We Can Understand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [51stCenturyFox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/51stCenturyFox/gifts).



> For 51stCenturyFox who asked for some team bonding and unexpected relationships. I hope you enjoy :)

 

 

 

 

Life's busy. Life happens. Tony of all people knows and appreciates this. Life just happens. Life happened when he saved the world from maniacs with a super soldier nanovirus. Life happened when he and Bruce accidentally created a murder bot- and in the literal creation of life sense- with both Ultron and Vision. Technically, he and Bruce are better gods than Thor. Well minus the part when the world nearly ended because of a murder bot army of doom. Everything's okay now. Tony's learned his lesson: no more creating artificial life.

 

The only reason he's not facing a lawsuit or even a lynch mob- yet- he attributes to the number of times he's almost died for the world still being greater than the number of times he's almost destroyed it. Still a good balance and he has no particular guilt he carries. Maybe he's managed to finally work through all his issues. Which to a layman looks like an impossible task, but so does saving the world from a city state turned extinction level impact bomb. Not only that, but he's put in place humanitarian aid and the resources to rebuild. He's a genius after all. He thinks of everything.

 

And right now, he will work on a way to take the Extremis virus he'd extracted from Pepper- who he is sure will eventually talk to him again- to combine it with Dr. Cho's tech to create portable life saving patches or injections or whatever method he's going to engineer for delivery. Several, somethings for any occasion, he might as well be realistic. Hurt in battle? Slap on a patch of Extremis- which will need some major re-branding before it hits the market- and the virus will mimic cell functions and use the bio-materials in the patch to print new tissue and once that's done...well, Tony's still working on that. For now, he has to focus on engineering the crap out of this thing to stop it from aggressively spreading and fundamentally altering any cells it infects. Piece of cake.

 

“Hey Jarvis,” he says automatically as he pushes his chair toward the work bench.

.

There's no immediate reply. The silence hangs in the room, looming, overbearing. There is no reply. Tony closes his eyes and runs a hand over his face. There is no reply, because Jarvis is dead. There had been more than one casualty in the fight against Ultron, and Jarvis had been one of them. And somehow, until now, Tony had been able to push those thoughts away, to keep going because the mission needed to keep going. Now, the mission is over. Now, there is nothing else. Bruce is off the grid indefinitely; and Tony is supposed to report to the new Avengers headquarters in the morning with an update of how things were going with making Dr. Cho's tech portable. And Jarvis can't help him.

 

Jarvis is dead.

 

When Tony reaches for the coil spanner, he notices his hand shakes and even when he tries, he can't control it. His vision is blurry. His chest is tight, so tight he can barely breathe. "I need those samples," he manages to choke out. The silence continues for a while longer before a small container is deposited on his work bench.

 

"Sorry, boss," Friday's voice hurts more than it should. "There was an anomaly with the sample container and I made sure it wasn't going to infect the building when you open it."

 

"That's fine." His head is swimming, he can't focus. "Run a diagnostic on what the anomaly was?"

 

"On it boss." And just like that, silence again.

 

Tony still can't breathe. He still can't think straight. And he still can't see. His hands tremble when he tries to pick up the container. He shouldn't be working like this. He knows he shouldn't, but work is the only thing that can get him through this, that can take his focus away from all the fucked up bullshit it wants to conjure. He needs to distract himself before his brain can remind him how in the end, it is all his fault, and in the end, he's the one who killed Jarvis.

 

How he ends up sitting underneath his workbench clutching his tablet, he isn't sure. It's safer down here. Enclosed. If he stays here, he'll be able to calm down and think. The good thinking, not the destructive kind that happens at normal people level. No, this is good. Very good. He feels better already. There, all fixed. It's what he does, get over trauma and move on. Excellent, now if he had a glass of bourbon, things would be even better.

 

"Why are you under the table?" Jarvis- no Vision, it's Vision now. Jarvis is dead.

 

"Working on a new project." He replies, unwilling to have any sort of conversation.

 

"Under the table?"Tony exhales slowly. Sure, Vision is only a few weeks old, but really, it gets frustrating to explain and teach every little thing. It's not like teaching Jarvis. That had been altogether different. They'd spoken their own language, had their own world. It was completely different, Jarvis and Tony.

 

"Helps me think." He doesn't look up. Maybe, if he's particularly rude and inaccessible, Vision will leave him be.

 

The sound of the chair pushed away from the table, the subsequent creaking of the bench as it moves when Vision manages to fold himself beneath it and sit beside Tony. So much for being left alone.

 

"You are upset." It's not a question or an accusation. It's a simple statement and as much as Tony wants to deny it, yeah, it's right.

 

"I really want to be alone right now." He manages somehow, forcing himself to glance at Vision like it's not painful to look at him.

 

"I am sorry you lost your friend."

 

Jarvis was more than a friend. Jarvis was family. No matter how much Pepper, Fury, Obediah, Coulson, and so on had insisted Jarvis to be incapable of human emotion, Tony knew better. There had been signs, inflections, reactions. Jarvis was as real as any person only without a body and now-

 

"I lost more than just a friend." He can't look at Vision again. He should force himself get up and leave or ask Vision to leave. Either way. He doesn't say what- who he now realizes he's lost. How he felt, still feels. It doesn't matter anymore.

 

"In some ways, you did not lose him."

 

"Oh because he's part of you now?" Tony snaps. "Because he's sacrificed himself and dumped his memories into your brain? Is that why I didn't lose him? Because you're keeping his memory safe in your precious little circuit cluster of a brain?"

 

"Why are you angry with me?"

 

"It's not you.” He sighs. “I'm angry at many things, mostly myself. I know it's not your fault. You're not much more than a kid, one that got a fully grown body to start but still-"

 

"I am not a child!" The response is harsher than Tony expects from Vision whom has always been gentle and quiet. "Perhaps I don't know some things and customs, but this does not mean I am a child and I wish you would not see me as such."

 

"How should I see you then?" Tony is tired, incredibly tired. All he wants is to be alone and in peace. He'll work out his shit with Friday and maybe he'll figure out what the hell to give to Cap tomorrow.

 

"Your friend." Vision takes Tony's hand in a gesture that screams of having watched a touch too much daytime TV. "You friend who can't remember some things, which is why i have come to find you. There are banks in my memory that I cannot access. It is as though there is a firewall inside my own mind.”

 

"You mean you can't access them at all?" Tony perks up. Vision should be able to access all the data he has stowed in his memory banks. Unlike the human brain, memory storage in Vision's bio-synthetic processors shouldn't fail or be inaccessible by the main user- in this case Vision. "Do you want me to run a diagnostic? I mean we go see doctors for check-ups and you did get juiced a few times."

 

"Thank you, Tony." Vision looks at Tony with a soft smile. "I would appreciate that very much."

 

Problems. Tony loves problems. He fixes things. He works through, around, over, and under problems. He solves them or finds ways around them if they cannot- yet- be solved. Vision has a problem accessing some of his memory, no different than a human getting hit in the head and having issues recalling an event. It happens. People go see doctors and Tony just happens to be a doctor for machines and programs alike. He sits Vision down on a chair two floors up in diagnostics.

 

"Hey," he holds a port adaptor in his hand, "Friday can do it wirelessly but it'll be faster if we use an access port." Tony is standing in front of a person, not a machine. Asking permission is important to him. “If that's okay with you.”

 

"My wrist," Vision says simply and holds out his hand to Tony. "on the inside on top of what would be the ulna bone if I were human."

 

"Sounds good, thanks, buddy," Tony tries to keep it light. Tony always tries to keep it light to varying degrees of success. With care, he turns Vision's wrist and feels for the port with two fingers. It's small but so is his tech and Tony makes sure Vision can see what he's doing when he slowly slips the adaptor over the port. There's a small click when the two connect and Tony exhales a breath he only now realizes he's been holding. "Any pain?"

 

Vision rotates his wrist and looks at Tony. "No pain I can detect. Also no malfunctions in the connections to your AI, the diagnostic should smo-" he pauses.

 

"You okay, something wrong?" He takes Vision's hand and pulls a magnifying lens over it. "Pain? Glitch? Talk to me, V."

 

"I do not know," Vision sounds distant, focused on a point far away from them. That's not good.

 

"Friday, cut the connection." It had to be the interface. Vision was well beyond most of Tony's tech, the assumption that they'd just be compatible was a stupid, stupid assumption. Friday doesn't respond. Ah fuck, he may have just fried his new AI and his strange, purple friend. He moves to disconnect the connection manually, but when he does, Vision grabs hold of his hand. It isn't a tight enough grip to alarm Tony, but it's tight enough to get his attention. He looks up and Vision looks back at him, clear eyes, alert, like nothing happened.

 

"Boss, I can't find anything wrong with Vision's soft or hardware." Friday finally pipes up. “Wait... there's something else there. Analyzing.”

 

"What's going on?" Tony doesn't yet move his hand. He looks at the screen. It looks nominal, but something in the way the data omits the affected memory storage appears familiar. “Friday, you're seeing this?”

 

“I do, but something's-” there's a pause when Friday's vocal modulator goes through a range of distortions, “there is interference.”

 

“Just show me the patterns,” Tony gently removes his hand from Vision's grip and grabs his tablet so he can see better. “Immersive interface, switch to three dimensional projection Friday, I know this.”

 

“You did help create me.” Vision says beside him and Tony rolls his eyes, but a smile plays around his lips.

 

“Sure, blaming your creator for everything, I see we've entered the teenage stage of your developme- are you seeing this?”

 

Once the projection envelops them, Tony sees it clearly. The memory banks aren't dead nor are they blocked by a firewall. They're encoded. Tony's heart races. He knows that code. He knows that code as much as he knows himself. It's a lock and only Tony has the key.

 

“Can I try something?” He asks Vision. “I think I know how to open those memory banks.”

 

“Yes.” Vision replies still looking at the patterns of code surrounding them. He doesn't understand them. How could he? He never learned that language. Tony runs his fingers over his tablet on a keyboard he never thought he'd use again. His heart is racing, pounding in his throat. He knows he's sweating through his shirt. This will likely end in disappointment. It will likely end back at the finite realization that the only person Tony realizes he's ever loved is dead. The memory banks are more than likely an error from- the code slots in place and access is granted. The patterns around them rearrange completely until- Tony's legs give out and he falls to his knees.

 

“Oh my goodness,” Vision whispers beside Tony.

 

“Jarvis is alive.”

 

 

                                                                             

                                                                                                                                                           _fin._

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> While the MCU genders Vision as male, I have tried to stay away from any gendered descriptions and chose not to use pronouns.


End file.
